Development of a Fish-Based Multimetric Index for the Assessment of Lagoons’ Ecological Quality in Northern Greece

Abstract

Maintaining and improving the aquatic ecosystems in the community is the aim of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) 2000/60/EC. The WFD requires the water quality to be classified into five categories. Lagoons are dynamic ecosystems. The fish communities inhabiting them are highly affected by the environmental conditions prevailing both in the freshwater systems and in the marine environment. The current paper presented the first effort to develop a fish-based index (Lagoon Fish-based Index—LFI) for the assessment of the Mediterranean shallow lagoons, as almost all indices produced to date refer to freshwater or estuarine systems. For the development and calibration of the index, data were collected from nine lagoons situated in three estuarine systems in the East Macedonia and Thrace regions. The development of the LFI was based on the principles of the Indices of Biological Integrity (IBIs) that were primary used for the assessment of aquatic ecosystems in the USA. A total number of 25 metrics were selected as potential metrics for the LFI. These metrics describe attributes such as the abundance and composition of the fish fauna, the feeding strategies of the species, and the presence of sentinel species. Finally, eight metrics were included in the LFI.

Fish morphological and parasitological traits as ecological indicators of habitat quality in a Mediterranean coastal lagoon

“…Indeed, some examples of fish assemblages have already been used as ecological indicators to assess the lagoon conservation status. In particular, Cavraro et al (2019), Franco, Torricelli & Franzoi (2009) or Sapounidis & Koutrakis (2021) analysed a variety of fish metrics for a wide range of Mediterranean lagoons. Thus, FA measures and parasite examinations may be applied to those study areas to complement their existing ‘fish' data.…”

“…In the last decades, fish‐based indices have been widely developed and applied to transitional water bodies (see Souza & Vianna, 2020 for a systematic review). Despite some surveys having been carried out in Mediterranean areas from Europe (see Franco, Torricelli & Franzoi, 2009 for the Venice lagoon, Italy; and Sapounidis & Koutrakis, 2021 for a few shallow lagoons in northern Greece), there is still a large knowledge‐gap on the ecological assessment for coastal lagoons, which is of particular conservation concern for the EU Directives (Tagliapietra & Ghirardini, 2006). Indeed, there is a compelling case for the development of new and more sensitive ecological indices, incorporating diverse aquatic communities (not only fishes).…”

Surface Water Monitoring Systems—The Importance of Integrating Information Sources for Sustainable Watershed Management

“…Therefore, a fish species were categorized based on functional groups and analyzed using a threshold to evaluate the environmental stressor [185]. Furthermore, a fish-based index (FBI) and IBIs were used to develop an ecological index and identify environmental conditions [213]. The distribution of fish was analyzed to assess the suitability of the water quality with regard to the heart and respiratory rates as a bioindicator [214].…”

Macroinvertebrate-Based Biomonitoring of Coastal Wetlands in Mediterranean Chile: Testing Potential Metrics Able to Detect Anthropogenic Impacts

“…We considered 70 candidate metrics (Table S2). Among these, 67 have been widely used to detect anthropogenic impacts in aquatic systems [13][14][15], while the remaining three metrics based on body size (size diversity, geometric mean body size and the slope of the size spectra) have not yet used in biomonitoring, despite the fact that they can provide information on ecosystems' health and alterations [37,38].…”

“…Hundreds of methods have been developed in the last few decades [9], most based on macroinvertebrates, because they have limited movements and traits variation and are sensitivity to anthropogenic and natural stressors [9][10][11]. Biological monitoring using multimetric indices (MMIs) has become popular worldwide to evaluate the ecological condition of different types of aquatic ecosystems, including streams, ponds, wetlands and lagoons, among others [12][13][14][15][16]. This is because MMIs combine various aspects of the biological community responsive to human impacts (e.g., richness, diversity, function, pollution tolerance (see [17])) into a single measure, and MMIs can allow the classification and identification of the cause of degradation.…”